Talk:Roller Coasters Community/@comment-33791232-20180325083344
Went to Alton Towers yesterday for the official opening day weekend and it was amazing. Thought I might write a little review because I have nothing else to do with my spare time today. I went with my brother and my best friend. We had bought a fast track previously for The Smiler as the queues were reaching up to an hour and a half long and as my friend honestly only wanted to ride that, we had to buy it. We immediately got on and it was as great as I remember. It's a very intense ride and it is my favourite for a very good reason, it creates the perfect atmosphere and is a very enjoyable ride. After that we won some sort of smiler bean bag or something. (We didn't actually win it, the woman just gave it to us after our third time trying.) We called it Keremy Jyle. We went on the congo river rapids, which is a nice little water ride with a queue that's never too long, and then Duel, which is one of those indoor shooting things (I've forgotten what they're called oops.) which looks quite amazing after the recent TLC done on it. I walked into a wall while leaving Duel and now I have an egg like lump on my head. We also walked past Wicker Man. There were some actors there and lots of little acts like people on stilts jumping about. The queues were over 3 hours long, and the fastrack queue also looked very long as it stretched all the way out of the building next to the normal queue. The ride kept on breaking so the queue was taking much longer than 3 hours and I'm pretty glad I didn't waste the whole day queuing for it. Then we went to the Forbidden Valley, caught some people rehearsing for some sort of new show with some team members of an important forum I know of and some other group filming something, which I think may be to do about the documentary. We got a ride on Galactica (without the VR of course, the VR is absolutely terrible and not even properly synced to the ride) and Nemesis. Galactica's more of a relaxing ride whereas Nemesis is quite intense. If you do go, you should definitely go on Nemesis, and Galactica if the queues aren't too long. Nemesis usually has a smaller queue but it is very intense and one of the best rides in the park. By now it was about 5:30. The rides close at 6:00. I have this brilliant idea (not really) that if we run to Wicker Man now, we can get a ride on it. So I do just that because, why would you go on the opening day of a ride if you're not even going to ride it? Of course my friend and my brother thought that it was a terrible idea but oh well. The queue was still open so we got in and queued from 5:40 till 7:50. It had gone completely dark by now and the only ride that was still going was Wicker Man, because all the others had closed at 6 and the rest of the park was closed. No one was around except for the occasional staff member. While queuing, every now and again someone would leave through the miles of queue saying something like "You should all just leave I've been queuing for the last two hours and I still haven't got on!" The ride seemed to be continuously breaking - they kept on sending a test car round after every car loaded with people, and the ones loading with people had 4 rows that were empty. Eventually we did get on. I had really low expectations to be honest. It just looked like a wooden rollercoaster except they'd have some fire effects that you'd see and that was it. It didn't look very intense at all. The preshow was very good, just the right length for one. The ride itself was so much better than I could've ever imagined. It went much faster than it looked and was so much more intense than it looked. The first drop completely threw me off as it felt quite steep and very fast. There were a lot more indoor areas of it, like the many sound tunnels, and in them it was filled with smoke and all I could see was red and white colours. It actually felt like you were in the Wicker Man, being burnt. You go through the Wicker Man three times, and you are yet again bombarded with smoke and the red and white colours all around you. Going through the Wicker Man at night was amazing, just as you were about to go through it the shoulders would light on fire and light up the whole area of the park. It would light up the darkness of the queue while we were waiting. You can see everything for a split second before the fire goes out again. The ride would throw you around quite a bit, I was stuck leaning to the left not able to get upright for a good portion of the ride, but that made it more enjoyable. At the end it was another tunnel that seemed to go quite fast while I was still stuck on the left and then the ride ended. It's the best wooden roller coaster I've ever been on, and one of the best roller coasters I've ever been on. I'm not sure if it's as good in daylight but if you ever find yourself in Alton Towers, you should really ride it. Sorry for the really long review, I'm just still a bit excited after yesterday.